Rain Has Turned California Into a Pile of Muck

By Liz Fields February 28, 2014

Heavy rain has turned parts of California into virtual mud pits after storms pummeled Southern California today, causing mudslides, mass evacuations, street closures and power and water outages.

On the streets of Glendora and Azuza, cars were pictured almost completely submerged in a heavy flowing river or muck and debris after rains came down heavy over the region early this morning.

A blaze last month near Glendora had scorched 2,000 acres of hillside and mountain, leaving it dry and bare. So communities in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains feared that heavy rains would make the land wet and unstable.

About 1,000 homes in the area were issued a mandatory evacuation order on Thursday, but some residents chose to stick it out, using sandbags to help protect their homes against the mud.

"It's probably worse than what I anticipated would happen," Glendora resident Larry Davis told local ABC station KABC-TV. "I didn't know all this debris was going to be coming down."

So far, no homes have been damaged, officials said.

In nearby Monrovia, 200 homes were evacuated today, while other parts of the San Francisco Bay and Central Valley regions also felt the impact of the storm.

Bad weather will persist through the weekend in Southern California, with rain expected to last through Saturday night, according to the ABC weather team.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.